As digital photographic images become more and more prevalent, techniques have been developed to allow users to alter these images through various computational enhancements, such as blurring, sharpening, and so forth. These computational enhancements are often performed by applying a particular enhancement parameter to all of a photographic image. The result is a new data file representing a new, enhanced version of the photographic image after application of the desired parameter.
While these all-image enhancements are often useful, in some situations users desire to enhance particular areas of a photographic image. To address this desire, some techniques provide a limited solution that allows users to sharpen a selection of a photographic image. These techniques perform a relatively small sharpening enhancement with each selection and, by repeating this enhancement, continue to sharpen until the user is satisfied. This sharpening is relatively small, adding a small amount of sharpening with each selection because the enhancement is often destructive to the image, meaning that the sharpening is difficult or impossible to reverse. This relatively small sharpening in turn can result in a poor user experience due to the many selections needed by users to gain the desired sharpening. Furthermore, this limited solution is generally memory and processor intensive for computing devices on which it is performed.
The background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventors, to the extent the work is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description that may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly nor impliedly admitted as prior art against the present disclosure.